Siren Song
by RiP-Vii
Summary: Part IV of my seven part series The Legend. A ship that sails the dark, monster-ridden seas, searching for the deadly song that is its namesake--what happens when a still-sightless Vianne, separated from D by circumstance, gets tangled up in its voyage?
1. Bon Voyage

**The Legend IV**

Siren Song

_Vampire Hunter D Fan Fiction_

* * *

_# Hi, I'm finally back!! Omg I'm ALIIIIVE!!!11! To those who are amazing enough to still be waiting, sorry for the long wait, and thank you for having such faith in me. How shall I explain away the latest million-year-long writer's block? Let's just say my life hasn't exactly been rosy the past few months, and I really didn't have the inclination to write, being busy sitting around drowning in emo, and all. Well, whatever. That's in the past! Allow me to present Siren Song, the fourth instalment of The Legend!_

_

* * *

_**Chapter 1: Bon Voyage**

"Bon voyage."

Vianne frowned slightly. The uncharacteristic phrase was delivered in the same steely, cool tone that its speaker always used, whether being faced by life or death, sorrow or joy. Her eyes were closed—there was no point in opening them since she had been blind for two years now—but she thought she could see, in her mind's eye, his impassive visage.

"Let's see if I have my facts right," she answered in a sceptical tone. "I'm going to back to the mainland by ship. You're going to stay here and finish the job, and _then_ magically appear at the harbour to meet me, and if all goes well we'll make it just in time for the deadline?"

"That is the general idea."

"Why don't I get to try your secret amazing way of travelling across the sea faster than an express ship?"

"Like you said, it's…" D hesitated, "…secret and amazing."

"Ah," Vianne said, not quite knowing how to respond to a humorous-seeming line delivered in a voice that was anything but cheery, by a person who existed on a different plane of reality from any form of comedy.

The pair was currently standing on a pier in the harbour of Zeiss, a small island colony managed by the mayor of the port city Cyrelaide. They had undertaken a three-day journey by ship to the island at the behest of that same mayor, who had hired D to dispatch some nasty sea serpents plaguing the colony. Being a bossy, overhearing man who liked to flaunt his authority, he had imposed a rather tight time limit on the completion of the assignment. At the same time, he had severely understated the number, strength and _breeding ability_ of the abovementioned serpents.

"Well then," Vianne said as she heard her ship's bell ring urgently. "Good luck with the extermination of…baby serpents. Bring me one to cuddle if they turn out to be cute. Surely you can reveal your amazing secret ways of travel to a dumb beast? See you, figuratively, in three days!"

With that, she turned and ran with surprising dexterity, considering her blindness, up the broad plank that facilitated the boarding of the passenger ship moored at the end of the pier. She turned upon reaching the deck, waving in what she had calculated to be D's general direction.

He smiled, just a little, and raised a pale, slim hand in response before turning and heading back along the pier. She, of course, saw none of this.

* * *

"Sirens? What are those?" Vianne asked, her voice brimming with fascination.

"Some say they're beautiful sea maidens," the good-natured sailor assigned to assist her due to her disability, who had taken to amusing her with seamen's tales, replied in a suitably dramatic voice. "Beautiful, but very dangerous. They feed on men's souls, you see. On stormy nights, they will sing their bewitching song, and ships will be lured onto the rocks. Then the Sirens will come, and pick their prey out of the shipwreck."

"What kind of songs do they sing?"

"Haunting songs of dark magic, made to ensnare men's minds and lure them to their doom," the storytelling sailor declared grandly. "But their song is said to have a greater power, should they choose to use it. If one can persuade them, they can sing a different melody, a melody so beautiful that it cures the listener of any ailment or disability, no matter how irreversible."

Vianne's voice dimmed a little as she asked, "Will it cure my eyes?"

"I reckon it will," the sailor answered. "But any Sirens we meet will more likely try to kill us all than to sing for your eyes, eh? They might be beautiful, but even they would be driven to jealous anger by a pretty girl like you."

Vianne laughed, and thanked him for the compliment. "Have you ever seen a Siren?"

"What's with the Siren talk?" another, less good-humoured voice chimed in. The storyteller's grumpy, slightly drunk colleague swaggered over, plastering himself onto the railing beside Vianne. "It's bad luck to talk about Sirens at sea. They say the _Siren Song_ will come to those who talk incessantly of Sirens."

"The siren song?" Vianne echoed, sounding more curious than ever. "The one that lures sailors to their doom?"

"Nay, not that old wives' tale!" the grumpy sailor said disdainfully. "Don't listen to everything Jack tells you. The _Siren Song _is a ship, a pirate ship, so named because it's inescapable and deadly as the siren's song. No ship that it decides to pursue ever escapes from it, and it frequently plunders ships sailing through these parts. The mayor and his cocky 'coast guards' have been trying to catch those bloody pirates for years, to no avail."

"Don't scare passengers with your drunken raving!" Jack protested. "The _Siren Song _rarely attacks passenger ships; it goes for cargo carriers."

"It does when the crew craves some women," his colleague pointed out obtusely. "Girlie, you should hide. They might really come if they spot a pretty thing like you standing around on deck through their telescopes."

Vianne laughed again at that, and merely said, "Well if they come, we'll just have to fight them all off, won't we?"

"I know this is no longer the age to scoff at woman warriors and all, but I wasn't expecting that to come from you, girlie. How do you fight off something you can't see?"

Before he even finished, there was a soft click, and he found the barrel of a pistol hovering a bare inch from his forehead. Vianne smiled and said, "Like this, if they all make as much noise as you do."

"That's what you get for trying to scare a tough little missy, Hugh," Jack laughed.

"For one," Vianne said as she lowered her pistol and slipped it back into the holster hidden under her long jacket, "pirates aren't scary."

Not compared to what she had seen. Leaving Jack to jeer at Hugh for his humiliation, she took the latter's advice, and went below deck.

* * *

Vianne was flung out of her bunk as the ship shook violently from the impact of something large hitting its side. Obviously wide awake now, she could hear people screaming and running all around—along the corridor outside her cabin, in the hold below, and on the deck above.

Mixed in with all the commotion were the cries of some sort of wild beast, along with a great deal of creaking, cracking and groaning from the ship's structure. A sea creature was attacking the vessel.

There was the sound of shattering glass, and then a series of squishing noises as something slimy squeezed into the porthole it had broken through. Vianne scrambled back across the floor, avoiding the wriggling tentacle that had invaded her cabin by listening to it swish through the air.

Vianne's hand landed on something flat and made of leather—her belt. Attached to it were her twin pistols and a long dagger. Yanking the dagger out of its sheath, she slashed out blindly in the general direction of the swishing noises. The sharp blade encountered resistance, and something foul-smelling sprayed into the air as something soft, heavy and wet landed on the floor nearby with a horrid squelch.

The mystery monster attacking the ship let out a screech, and the rocking of the ship reached new heights of vigour. Snatching up her belt and buckling it on, Vianne groped around for the door, found it, and twisted the knob.

The door shot open as the ship pitched to one side, and Vianne was hurled through into the opposite wall in the corridor outside. Cursing under her breath as she staggered to her feet, covered in her second set of fresh bruises for the night, Vianne grabbed the open door of her cabin and slammed it shut, blocking the progress of the maimed tentacle still wriggling deeper in through the porthole.

The corridor was empty—the passengers who had survived the tentacle invasion had already fled to the hold or the deck. The swishing and wet thumping nearby told Vianne that several tentacles were flailing around in the corridor as well, having infiltrated it through the open doors of vacated cabins.

Vianne started down the corridor, heading for the stairs that would lead her up to the deck level. She kept her pace slow, steady and deliberate, neither rushing nor making any apparent effort to skirt the tentacles in her way. As she approached the closest one, it shrank back into the cabin out of which it was sprouting, writhing reluctantly. The next tentacle in her way followed suit. After she passed, the tentacles surged back out of the cabins, once again groping around in vain for living creatures to strangle.

Before long, Vianne arrived at the foot of the stairs, with a trail of blood droplets marking the floor behind her. It had been left by the two puncture wounds on her left wrist, out of which blood was leaking in fairly copious amounts. She also felt like she was about to collapse; the creature assaulting the ship was gargantuan and powerful, and causing a few of its numerous appendages to move involuntarily had been no easy feat, even with _that_ power.

Nonetheless, Vianne disregarded her fatigue and started up the stairway, gripping the metal rail tightly to keep from being thrown off by the tremors the ship was experiencing. She reached the top and stumbled through the door that led outside—into utter chaos.

The deck was a mass of slimy tentacles, broken equipment and panicking—or dead—people. Those who could not fight to save their lives were huddled in corners or behind bits of debris, shrieking their heads off, shoving others to get at safer spots, and otherwise exhibiting behaviour typical of helpless, terrified humans. Those who could fight, including most of the sailors, were scattered about the deck hewing desperately at oncoming tentacles with weapons.

The tentacles were too numerous to count—the creature seemed to have an unlimited supply of them. The main body, out of which the tentacles ensnaring the ship were sprouting, poked out above the dark water some distance away from the ship. At least, the top five percent of it was. That tiny visible portion of the creature's body was vermillion, mottled, and obviously slimy like the tentacles, which were the same colour but with whitish undersides. And pink suckers. _Huge_ pink suckers.

Fresh screams rose over those of the unharmed but hysterical. Several of the fighters had been overpowered by the endless onslaught of abovementioned sucker-covered tentacles, and were being dragged under the sea into, presumably, the waiting beak-like mouth of the sea creature.

There was too much noise coming from all directions; Vianne could not distinguish one sound from another, extra sensitive though her hearing was. As a result, she had no way of noticing the tentacle snaking purposefully her way.

She let out a scream of her own as a tentacle wrapped around her waist and lifted her from the deck. Reacting quickly, she reached out mentally for the power of the Moon Bracelet around her still-bleeding left wrist. There was a loud crackle of energy as a blue force field materialised and expanded outwards around her, repelling the otherwise unbreakable grip of the tentacle. Vianne landed with a loud thump on the deck, bleeding badly from the large circular wounds that the powerful suckers had left on the skin of her midriff—the lower half of her blouse had been ripped away, along with most of the skin under the fabric.

It hurt like hell, but she did not have the luxury of rolling around wailing in agony. Besides, she knew that non-life-threatening wounds like these would heal in no time. Keeping the barrier up, Vianne staggered to her feet. How far could she expand this thing? Could she possibly cover the whole ship and repel the monster clinging to it?

She was not given the chance to discover the answer. At that moment, there was a horrible crunching sound as the pressure exerted by the tentacles crushed the hull of the ship. The sea monster had grown tired of picking off tiny preys one by one and getting its tentacles mangled for its trouble. It now pulled with all the might of its seven billion and one tentacles, dragging the damaged ship, which was taking in water and losing buoyancy, down into the dark, cold water where it could feast at its leisure on drowned, unresisting corpses.

The creature did not bother with symmetry, of course. One side of the ship went down first—the side closer to the partially visible head of the monster. The nice, horizontal deck had suddenly become an almost vertical wall, and people, being subject to the force of gravity, naturally started falling off it. Those who were unlucky got snatched out of the air by waiting tentacles, while the others plunged into the freezing black seawater, fated to survive a bit longer until they drown.

Vianne was among the latter. She was knocked senseless as she crashed headfirst into the raging waves, which had been ignored by her barrier. Apparently, the Moon Bracelet did not classify The Sea as an offensive force.

On the bright side, falling debris did bounce off the barrier, preventing her from being bludgeoned to death at least.


	2. Mount Echo

**The Legend IV**

Siren Song

_Vampire Hunter D Fan Fiction_

_# Hi! I'm finally back! Thank you so much to those who are still waiting even after so long, and sorry for the long, long wait!_

**Chapter 2: Mount Echo**

"Rise and shine, girlie, it's way past time to wake up!"

Upon being shaken and prodded rather roughly, Vianne came to. She could not see it for herself, of course, but she was lying on the deck of a large, well-armed ship with most of its crew gathered around her. She felt no pain—all the wounds she had sustained during the monster attack, including the rather grievous ones on her bare midriff, had completely healed. Her belt, along with the pistols attached to it, had been taken from her.

"Good morning," one of the loutish seamen surrounding her said in a jeering voice. "Welcome aboard the _Siren Song_, missy. Now that you're awake, we'll give you a proper welcome. Who wants to go first?"

The gathered pirates went wild then; they started making lots of noise and shoving each other to get to the front of the crowd. One of them grabbed Vianne's arm and attempted to haul her off, but was shoved aside by several others.

Clearly, these men had not rescued her from the water out of the goodness of their hearts. They clearly saw her as nothing more than female fodder to satisfy their long-suppressed appetites. She was considering playing her last remaining card and using the Moon Bracelet when a new voice, more youthful than the rest, yelled, "What the hell are you shitheads doing?"

The pirates stopped bickering at once and turned to face the roguishly handsome young man in his early twenties who had emerged onto the deck. Despite the fact that he was probably at least ten years younger than the next youngest man present, there were cowed looks all around and murmurs of, "Sorry, Captain."

"And who's that?" the young captain demanded, gesturing vaguely in Vianne's direction. Unsure how things were going to develop, she remained seated on the floor.

"A survivor from the shipwreck," one of his men answered immediately. "We accidentally hauled her up along with the salvage, and found that she's still breathing."

"What're you holding?"

"Pistols, Captain. We got them off the girl."

Without another word, the captain held out his hand. Also wordlessly, the crew member handed Vianne's belt over.

"Get back to work, dumbasses. All of you."

Reluctantly, the crew scattered, each man going back to his station. The captain approached Vianne and said in a surprisingly bright voice, "Hi there. Can you stand?"

"Give them back," Vianne said flatly, unimpressed by his show of friendliness. She could think only of her pistols—the pistols that were all she had left of her elder brother. "I don't care what you do with the bullets inside; just give my pistols back."

Shrugging, the captain tossed the entire belt into her lap without even emptying the pistols of ammunition. "Just don't bloody shoot anyone, okay?"

Vianne blinked in surprise—she had not expected to get them back this easily. She got to her feet, putting her belt back on. "Uh…thanks. I'll try my best."

"Great. Come with me; I'll take you to my cabin—it's about the only place on this ship where you won't get jumped by some horny bastard or another."

He turned and walked off. Evidently, he had not noticed that Vianne was blind. Wondering how someone like him had come to be captain of the most notorious pirate ship in the area, Vianne trailed after him, following the sound of his footsteps.

* * *

The young captain's name was Enrique Cortes, and he was the son of the previous captain of the _Siren Song_—he had been born on the ship to a woman who had impulsively eloped with his father. He had thus been raised among ruffians aboard a pirate ship, and naturally talked rough. However, perhaps due to his mother's influence, unlike the average marine robber he did not possess a particularly vicious or ruthless nature, although he did possess a considerable amount of immature arrogance and a rather quick temper. In fact, if not for necessity he would be the sort of flippant, frivolous young man who would reject every productive activity and take nothing, except looking cool in front of the ladies, seriously. In short, personality-wise he was more like a disinterested teenage delinquent than a hardened criminal.

Because of that, and because of his young age, most of the crew secretly resented his being captain, although they grudgingly remained silent in the face of his nonetheless firm, effective leadership and unquestionable abilities. Under him, they continued to flourish just like they had under his father, and that alone prevented mutiny.

"Look, I'm sorry and all, but I can't turn the ship around just to ferry you to Cyrelaide," Enrique told Vianne. After a moment of thought he added, "Besides, what the hell do you take me for? I'm a pirate captain; I don't do the whole helping others thing. Not to mention the fact that I'll get arrested the moment the ship reaches port."

"Why don't you just drop me off in a small boat somewhere not too far from the port?" Vianne suggested hopefully. "You don't have to go close enough to get caught, and there'll surely be ships passing through the area for you to rob…or something."

"No can do. I already told you, I'm trying to go somewhere in the opposite direction from Cyrelaide. I'm not attacking ships for the moment—there's no use in being the most feared pirate ship ever if you strike so frequently that people stop using the trade routes you prowl; then you'll just go out of business 'cause there's no one to rob. So we do other stuff while giving the merchants a break, okay? We actually have a specific place to go right now, so just be good and tag along until we come across a nice ship to dump you on.

"You look like you want to argue with me. Don't. Just stay here and…try not to touch anything that looks important."

Off he went.

* * *

The little boat that had ferried D across the few miles of choppy water between Zeiss and the grey, barren island creaked alarmingly as he stepped off it onto the rocky shore. The pebble beach he now stood on was one of the few small patches of flat ground—the rest of the island consisted solely of a craggy mountain.

"Thank you," D said, glancing back at the boatman.

"Well, I'll be heading back now," the old man declared with a nervous glance at the looming mountain. "How much time do you need? I'll come back for you."

"That won't be necessary," D replied. "I have my own arrangements."

The elderly boatman shot him a strange look, and then shrugged and said, "All right, whatever you say, hunter. You be careful in there; there's a lot more than serpent dens in those caverns, mark my words."

With those words of warning, he hurriedly disengaged his boat from the shore and sailed off, as if he could not wait to get away from the island. Unperturbed by his behaviour, D turned away from the sea and walked inland towards the base of the mountain.

* * *

Vianne was flung out of her seat as the ship shook violently from the impact of something large hitting its side. Again. Swearing under her breath, she picked herself up off the ground, wincing from fresh bruises.

_God damn it! Why is it that something _always _sees fit to attack whatever ship I'm on? I should just…stay off the sea._

On a more positive note, no roving tentacles came in to harass her this time. Nonetheless disinclined to trap herself in an enclosed room during a possible emergency, Vianne groped her way to the door of Enrique's cabin and let herself out.

This time, the deck she emerged onto was not being assailed by hundreds of giant tentacles. In fact, there was no sign of danger at all, except for the atmosphere of tense vigilance surrounding the crew present.

"Watch it, you moron!" Enrique chided the crew member he had left at the wheel. "If you bump my ship against those rocks again I'll throw you overboard."

"Where are we?" Vianne called out in the direction of his voice. The sweltering heat of the afternoon sun had suddenly vanished, and every sound seemed to echo endlessly—the ship seemed to have moved into an enclosed, shaded area.

"Hey there. Got a shock, did you?" Enrique answered from where he stood at the bow of the ship. "We've just entered the rock caverns beneath Mount Echo."

Vianne carefully made her way across the deck to join him. "Mount Echo?"

"It's a big rocky mountain that takes up most of the space on this little uninhabited island. It hides an extensive network of caverns in its base, most of which are partially underwater. We just sailed into one of the larger passages."

"What're you doing sailing around in subterranean caverns?" Vianne asked. An incredulous note entered her voice as she added, "You wouldn't happen to be hunting for ancient pirate treasure, would you?"

"This ain't a storybook, lady," Enrique scoffed. "We don't do treasure hunts. When we aren't out there raiding ships, we run other businesses to keep the money flowing in. At the moment, we're going to pick up some live cargo for delivery."

"Live cargo?" Vianne echoed. "What, you mean you freelance as exotic pet smugglers or something?"

"Let's put it this way: a lot of…enterprises require the hiring of a good ship and an experienced crew, and those who, for some reason, can't make use of regular ships turn to us pirates. Animal smuggling is one of them, but we don't discriminate. If the offer is good, we take it. And our current client is offering us a hell lot."

It was a vague, evasive answer, and Vianne was far from satisfied with it, so she added, "To do what?"

Enrique shrugged nonchalantly, as if he had decided that it would not matter whether he told her or not, and said, "'To catch a Siren, who better to ask than pirates as deadly as the song of the creatures themselves?' That was what the guy who hired us said. Creepy guy, that one. I mean, we get a lot of shady characters who hide their faces with masks and hoods, but this one…he didn't seem to need any of it. It was like he was shrouded in shadow. His face caught the light a few times, and I know I caught a few good glimpses of it, but…I can't seem to remember what he looked like at all. He gave me a name, but I've forgotten that, too."

"You're trying to catch a Siren?" Vianne said incredulously. "But they don't even exist! They're just a myth spread among seamen! A cautionary tale against…lechery, or something."

Her pirate companion smiled now, and said, "Oh, they exist, all right. I know because my old man ever encountered a bunch of them, back in the days when he was still a deckhand on someone else's ship. He never told me how he did it, but he was the only one on that ship to survive. That's why he named his own ship the _Siren Song_. Because he knew, far better than any superstitious old geezer spreading the tale, how much deadly promise that name carries."

"Well, if they're really so dangerous, what makes you think you can catch them?" Vianne challenged him.

Enrique's expression stiffened and grew dark for a moment, and then his face relaxed into a cocky smile—although his eyes remained troubled—as he replied, "My father was the first to survive an encounter with Sirens. I'll outdo him and be the first to capture one. Because I'm his son; I'm my father's son."

* * *

"Turn back," the figure floating in the dark, still pool commanded in an imperious voice that seemed to echo indefinitely. "In the name of the ancient covenant between our races, turn back and leave these caverns, vampire."

"I'm afraid I can't do that," D answered impassively. "I have business here. I am also not a Noble; your covenant does not bind me."

The aquatic guardian of the marine caves below Mount Echo sniffed the air intently for a few seconds, and then hissed in a far less melodious voice, "I smell on you the scent of the one who travelled here to seal the covenant millennia ago. I also smell the scent of a human. Neither is welcome here, _dhampir_. Therefore turn back, for you may not pass."

D remained silent and drew his sword. Negotiations were over. Clearly enraged, the guardian let out a shrill, raspy shriek, and was joined almost immediately by two others. An unearthly, enticing tune filled the air as D's battle for his passage deeper into the caverns began.

* * *

The _Siren Song_ shuddered as something under the dark water scraped along the length of its hull before pushing away, causing the hardy steel ship to rock violently from side to side. On the control deck, Enrique stormed over to the man at the wheel and smacked the back of his head, snapping, "You useless son of a bitch! Do you really want to be thrown overboard?"

And then it happened again, along the other side of the ship this time. Clutching his bruised skull, the poor helmsman groaned, "But Captain, I didn't bump into anything!"

Annoyance was replaced by alarm as Enrique ran to the railing and looked down at the water. There was movement just under the surface. Squinting hard, he managed to make out several long, thick bodies circling the ship.

"Shit!" he yelled, turning back to his crew. "Everybody to combat positions!"

On the main deck below, men dashed to pick up the weapons they had left lying around, or to man the machine guns mounted at intervals along the edge of the deck. And it was during this mad rush that the first sea serpent broke the surface of the water, rearing up to tower over the _Siren Song_.

It was huge—much larger than any sea serpent Enrique and his crew had ever encountered. Its body was as thick as a castle's watchtower, and far longer, although the exact length was unknown as most of it was still underwater. The leathery flaps around its head flared out, making it look even larger and more menacing as it opened its jaws wide and let out a horrible, high-pitched screech.

Vianne was the first to react. She raised one pistol, pointed it straight at the source of the deafening sound, and fired three shots. Two went into the roof of the creature's open mouth, and one into its bulbous left eye. Each impact was accompanied by a small, localised explosion—Vianne's pistols were loaded with explosive rounds—that splattered the deck with the serpent's blood.

The serpent screeched even more piercingly, bleeding copiously from the wounds in its mouth and its ruined eye, as it recoiled and ducked back under the surface of the water. Several of its companions popped up all around the ship to replace it, but the seasoned pirates had long since recovered from their shock and finished their preparations for battle.

Empty shells clattered to the deck as the crew of the _Siren Song _turned the mounted machine guns on the serpents, ripping apart the scale armour on their bodies with a relentless barrage of inch-thick bullets. Snipers armed with high-calibre rifles blinded the creatures with shots to their unprotected eyes. Others joined the assault with harpoon guns and even handheld machetes. Within minutes, all the serpents had either retreated with severe injuries or been slaughtered.

Enrique lowered his rifle and turned to grin at Vianne. "You're a pretty good shot, for a girl."

She ignored him, and turned away to hide her smile as she muttered, "Welcome to the serpents' den."


	3. Trespass

**The Legend IV**

Siren Song

_Vampire Hunter D Fan Fiction_

_# Hi! I'm back! After yet another long hiatus. Anyway, here is chapter 3 at last. By the way, I did some character sketches of Vianne for fun some time back; the scan is on deviantart, so for those who are interested, check it out! Here's the url (remove the spaces after the dots): _js-nana. deviantart. com/art/Vianne-163344215

**Chapter 3: Trespass**

"Looks like we'll have to continue on foot from here on," Enrique remarked as his men busied themselves with anchoring the stationary ship and loading supplies into the boats that would take them to the beach of black sand at the far end of the cavern.

Vianne ran a hand through her short hair; she had given up trying to maintain her long raven tresses without the use of her eyes some months back, and chopped them off in favour of her current, almost boyish hairstyle. The sleeves of the oversized shirt Enrique had lent her to replace her own ruined blouse hung loosely off her arm as she did so. She had become a virtual skeleton during the depressed phase she had entered following her blindness, and even after two years she had not completely regained the lost weight.

"Do whatever you want," she told Enrique nonchalantly. "You can hunt your deadly mermaids to your heart's content, but I'll have no part in it, thank you very much. I'll stay right here."

"I don't think so," he shot her down immediately. "You've got some skills going on there, girl, and I sure as hell am going to make use of them. Besides, you don't mean to say you want to stay on the ship with my _unsupervised_ men, do you?"

"If you put it that way, fine," Vianne conceded, putting on an irritated tone. It was not that she was particularly intimidated by Enrique's crew—something else had changed her mind. Something…the tugging of that dark, unfathomable presence at the back of her head.

Feigning reluctance, she allowed Enrique to help her into one of the loaded boats. Soon, she thought as the boat was lowered into the water, soon it would all be over.

* * *

"All right, all right! You may pass!" the lone surviving guardian of the watery caverns cried as D advanced upon her with his sword in hand. "Just stop all this! What do you want with us, dhampir? Why are you so bent on entering our domain?"

"The sea serpents originating from here have been causing some problems for a settlement nearby," D explained, sheathing his blade. "I'm being paid to resolve the problem."

The guardian looked troubled, and after a moment of hesitation said, "The problem runs deeper than you know, dhampir. It seems that there is no help for it; I shall take you to our Queen. Follow on foot along the water's edge for as long as you can, but eventually…I hope you can swim, dhampir."

* * *

The hunting party from the pirate ship had been exploring the above-water portion of the caverns for some time when Enrique froze. His sharp eyes had detected a flash of movement just outside the small field of brightness cast by the flashlights his men were carrying. His men swore and converged into a circle with their backs facing each other; they had seen it too—there was something out there.

"We're surrounded," Vianne said quietly. "Five of them, maybe six."

"How the hell can you tell?" Enrique whispered back. "I can't see shit in this darkness."

"I can hear them breathing," she replied. "As for you and your boys…if you have a flash grenade on you, I suggest you use it. But watch out—I have a feeling all hell is going to break lose once you do."

Enrique whispered some instructions to the crew member beside him and waited for the message to be passed down along the circle. Then he took a pair of grenades from his pack and tossed them out a safe distance away from the group in opposite directions. The grenades clattered to the rocky ground and detonated, flooding the immediate area with a blinding flash of fierce white light.

True to Vianne's word, there were six quadruped creatures prowling just beyond the area that had been illuminated by the crew's flashlights. They had broad, sturdy bodies supported by multi-jointed legs that ended in paws tipped with long, curved claws. The eyeless head of each was adorned with not one but three pairs of serrated tusks arranged along its lower jaw. And that was in addition to the very big, very sharp teeth arranged haphazardly in two uneven rows within their wide, powerful jaws. They were armoured from head to long, whip-like tail in what appeared to be solid bone plates.

Besides revealing them, the flash of light had also provoked them. As the grenade's flare flickered and died out, the creatures rushed in, pouncing on the pirates, who had armed themselves beforehand in preparation under Enrique's orders. Nonetheless, they were unable to withstand the lightning-quick assault of the ferocious, powerful creatures, and at least four out of the ten men accompanying Enrique went down within the first two seconds.

Vianne blocked out the agonised screams of the dying men and the frantic gunfire from the weapons of the rest, and focussed only on the rough growls of the cave beasts and the clicking of their claws against the rock. While the sight-reliant pirates panicked and struggled in the darkness, confused rather than aided by the wildly swinging beams of their own flashlights, she took careful aim based on her sense of hearing and fired her pistols.

Two years spent in perpetual darkness had honed that sense to razor precision. At first, she had only been able to hit somewhere within the close proximity of her target, and had had to rely on the blast radius of the explosive rounds loaded in her pistols to do the rest. Now, she could aim and shoot as well as someone who could see. Better, perhaps, especially in situations like this. She could not quite form an image of her surroundings based on sound like a bat, but was capable of pretty much anything short of that. Like the cave beasts, which had lost their eyes to evolution as there was no need for sight in pitch darkness, she was at no disadvantage here.

The first of the creatures to take a damaging hit howled in pain as the hard armour covering its shoulder was pulverised by Vianne's exploding bullets along with the joint underneath, splattering its blood everywhere and crippling it. The pirates closest to it descended upon it like vultures upon a carcass, hacking it to death by applying their blades to the narrow joints between its armour blades where its flesh was exposed. Meanwhile, Vianne blasted open the head of another of the eyeless cave predators.

Inspired perhaps by her explosive pistol rounds, some of the surviving pirates began to hurl concussion grenades out into the darkness in hopes of blowing up the creatures, which had the habit of retreating briefly after one assault before striking with deadly swiftness again out of the shadows. It was a very bad idea—unlike the small but powerful localised blasts from her bullets, their grenades delivered a great deal of blunt explosive damage over a wide area, which was bad news in a cave.

The entire tunnel shook with the series of explosions from the men's grenades. There was the sound of stone cracking, followed by an ominous rumbling noise.

"Idiots!" Enrique yelled as the remaining four cave beasts abruptly turned tail and fled the area. "Run for it!"

He grabbed Vianne's wrist and practically dragged her along behind him as he raced deeper into the caverns. All around them, the surviving pirates were fleeing in a blind panic too, as the tunnel began to collapse behind them. There were screams of agony as those of them who had been too slow were buried under the falling rock.

They reached an intersection of numerous separate tunnels, and Enrique sprinted into the smallest one with Vianne in tow while yelling for his men to follow him. But they either failed to hear him or ignored him in their frantic attempt to escape the cave-in, and scattered in all directions into the various tunnels.

"God damn it, those _morons_!" Enrique cursed breathlessly as he kept running, the wave of falling rock close at his heels. As the deluge of rock threatened to overtake and bury them, he pulled Vianne into his arms and threw himself into an even narrower tunnel branching off to one side.

He landed on his side with Vianne wrapped tightly in his arms, and they were sealed in the tunnel as the debris from the cave-in formed a sloping wall that blocked the entrance. The base of the solid mound of rock ended an inch away from the heel of Enrique's boot; they had escaped—barely. Outside, the rumbling quietened down.

"Shit," Enrique groaned. He was bruised and sore from the hard landing.

Vianne, having been cushioned against the impact by his body, had fared much better. Wriggling free of the now-slackened grip of his arms, she sat up.

"What have you gotten us into?" she demanded angrily. "This place…it's not meant for humans to enter."

"Look, things just got out of control," he retorted as he propped himself upright with some effort. "Relax, all right? We'll find another way out. Don't start saying such morbid things just because we ran into a bunch of hungry cave monsters. This was all a bad accident."

"Those weren't predators," Vianne said darkly. "If they were merely hungry, they would've just dragged some of us off and left, especially when we were capable of fighting. But they kept coming back, again and again. They were attacking to kill, not to feed. They weren't predators. They were guards. Guards of a place that we're trespassing in."

* * *

The innermost part of the Mount Echo caverns was a beautiful place. It was a perfectly circular chamber, its walls studded densely with formations of natural crystal. Microorganisms living among the crystal released a pale, multicoloured glow that was reflected and amplified by the facets of the crystals. Four natural rock arches, evenly spaced along the walls, led out of the chamber into tunnels that would in turn lead to the rest of the caverns. Each arch was veiled by a small waterfall cascading over it to feed the large pool of pure, clear water that filled the entire bottom half of the spherical space.

In the exact centre of the serene lake was a throne-like structure carved out of the exposed tip of an underwater pillar of smooth crystal. It was half-submerged, such that the seat was underwater but its occupant would be seated with head and shoulders above the surface.

As demonstrated by the woman of unearthly beauty who currently occupied it. Her lithe, enticing upper body was unclothed, while her lower body consisted of a long, scaly tail ending in flukes like a dolphin's instead of legs. Her face could have belonged to an angel, or a goddess, and the long hair spilling in elegant curls from her scalp could have been pure spun gold. There was a crystal-studded tiara worked into her hair.

"Welcome to my domain, dhampir, although you have come uninvited," she said in a lilting, musical voice to D, who was standing on the narrow rock shelf that ran along the wall of the chamber just above the water's surface. "I am Lyrica, the Siren Queen."

"D," D performed the courtesy of introducing himself with utmost brevity.

"You have trespassed in my domain, D, and killed two of my subjects," Lyrica said sternly. "By rights, you should be a dead man. But under the circumstances, I am willing to overlook your offences in exchange for a small favour. You should have no reason to refuse, for this matter is closely linked to the task that you have come to fulfil."

"I'm listening."

"The serpents that you have come to hunt were, until recently, under our control," Lyrica explained. "Like many of the other creatures living in Mount Echo, they guarded our home against trespassers. However, a couple of weeks ago they stopped responding to our songs, with which we tame and command them, and began venturing out to attack nearby human settlements and ships—something we have never allowed them to do. They have become abnormally ferocious, even to the point of attacking Sirens.

"After some investigation, we discovered that a bizarre barrier is now blocking all underwater entrances into the section of the caverns that the serpents use as their den and breeding ground. Serpents and other animals pass through this barrier as if it did not exist, but Sirens are unable to proceed beyond it. We are fairly certain that whatever is causing the serpents to go berserk lie within their den, beyond the barrier. I would like you to go there and eliminate it."

"And if I cannot pass beyond the barrier?" D asked.

"I am not so unreasonable as to ask you to swim your way through the den of unnaturally aggressive serpents, dhampir," Lyrica told him. "There is a hidden overland route into the serpent den, one that is not known to many Sirens. It is less likely that there will be a barrier there, and I assume that you function much better on dry land. Thus, that shall be your way in."

"If it is hidden, how will I find and navigate this route?"

"You will be brought to shore at a specific place, and your escort will summon a guide for you," Lyrica assured him. "Are you willing to do this for us?"

"My destination was the serpents' den in the first place," D replied. "If there is really something there that is causing their attacks, then it is also my job to eliminate it, along with the serpents I'm being paid to kill."

"No, you mustn't!" Lyrica protested with sudden vehemence. "The serpents would normally never attack humans. If you destroy the cause of their abnormality, they should leave the human settlement alone; there is no need to slaughter them. They are our friends whom we have coexisted with for centuries, dhampir. Please. They won't be a threat anymore, once the matter of the barrier is resolved. They will disappear from around the settlement, and your payment will be unaffected."

"Even so," D said unsympathetically, "if you want to make an additional request like that, it will cost you."

"I am already offering you amnesty," Lyrica snapped. "What more do you want?"

D conveyed his demands to her. Her eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed in displeasure, and finally closed in resignation as she said, "You have a deal. When the barriers disappear and the serpents return to normal, we will fulfil our end of the bargain."

D nodded in acknowledgement. "If there is nothing else, I'd like to get on with my job."

"Lorelei," Lyrica called, and the Siren who had brought D to the audience chamber reappeared. "Take our guest to his destination, and procure him a guide into the serpent den."


End file.
